Remember: Fudd's The One With The Gun, And This Time He's Killing Liberal Unitarians...

Which Elmer Is More Dangerous?

Or Anyone Else His Minister Tells Him To

For years I've said it (and countless times in this blog): yes, there are times when we look at fundamentalists and evangelicals as either "Elmer Gantry or Elmer Fudd." The Christian Right is not immune to stereotyping. They've done it to just about everyone else because "we're all sinners." When we think of Elmer Gantry, we think of (handsome) Burt Lancaster playing the game of moralizing for money and power. When we think of Elmer Fudd, we see an unsophisticated doofus being manipulated by a schrewd, scheming rabbit. We never really think of the one thing that Bugs Bunny realizes: Fudd's the one with the gun.

Here's a piece from Wayne Besen's lastest article Messages That Lead to Murder

(365Gay.com 07.31.2008 1:14pm EDT)

In Knoxville, Tennessee, a homophobic loser burst into a Unitarian Church where a children’s play was being performed and unleashed a fusillade of gunfire, killing two people and injuring six. According to police, Jim D. Adkisson, “had targeted the church because of its liberal leanings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country.”

So where did he get that idea? Ann Coulter? Possibly. Wayne Besen has some reasonable ideas about this:

When Focus on the Family’s James Dobson says that giving gay people the freedom to marry will “destroy the earth” he is encouraging hate crimes. When Oklahoma state legislator Sally Kern says that homosexuality is the “death knell of this country,” she is promoting gay bashing. When Elaine Donnelly told a congressional committee that lifting Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell would let lesbians take pictures of people in the shower she was setting the stage for violence. When Ann Coulter authors, “How to Talk To a Liberal (If You Must),” people like Jim Adkisson may be influenced.

Oh, and did you see this little blurb today? (From KOCO.com - NewsChannel 5)

OKLAHOMA CITY -- An Oklahoma lawmaker who made headlines in March for her comments regarding homosexuals was stopped from bringing a gun into the state Capitol on Wednesday, troopers said.

...The incident Wednesday is the second time in two months that Kern has been stopped with a weapon at the Capitol. In early June, troopers said, Kern breached security and entered the Capitol with a weapon.

Kern doesn't look a bit like Elmer Fudd, however she sounds dimwitted enough to be packin'. But people like Ann Coulter, Elaine Donnelly or even Michael Savage ("Get AIDS and die, you pig") aren't nearly as powerful as the local pulpit proselytizer. To many Christians, Unitarians are not only NON-Christian, but downright EVIL. Unitarians are, for the most part, liberals who do not believe in the divinity of Christ nor in the inerrancy of the Bible, believe that reason and science can coexist with belief in God, and are very accepting of other ideologies. Do you think that a "man of God" like Rod Parsley would consider Unitarians Christian? Would Ann Coulter consider them Christian? Would YOUR pastor or spiritual mentor consider Unitarians Christians? Billy Graham may now have come to the decision that Unitarians can achieve heaven, but to people like his son, Franklin, Unitarians and homosexuals, feminists, "heathens" will all go to hell.

Edward R. Murrow once said "A nation of sheep will develop a government of wolves." The same is true of a religion of sheep. The megachurch pastors, the televangelists and the "pulpit pimps" are all looked upon with mind-numbing awe. The spiritually lazy, the gullible and the just plain stupid will try to memorize their sermons, tithe as dutifully as possible and believe them when they say they need a private jet to continue to "spread the Word." How many of them are out there, waiting to be told to "kill a queer for Christ?" Maybe just a handful. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more.

How many think just being "liberal" is a sin? Like Adkisson, are they told by their ministers that liberals are ruining the country? Maybe.

But think of it this way: until pulpits stop spewing hatred for America, homosexuals, feminists, Muslims, liberals, Unitarians or atheists, people are going to be hurt.

People are going to be killed.

Just a thought.